[nabs-l] JAWS, Windows 7, and VMWare Fusion

[T. Joseph Carter]

Rob,

If you are using VMWare Fusion, you can use the Mac's own UA 
magnifier.  This has saved my bacon time and again dealing with tiny 
elements under Windows.

It also looks better than I've ever seen ZoomText look because of the 
bicubic interpolation used and the continuous zoom.  No more size X 
is too small, size Y is too big.  Zoom in enough to see what you 
can't, and that's it.

This won't follow the keyboard cursor automatically--the one major 
failing of the UA Magnifier.  To use the UA Magnifier (you doubtless 
already know this), press command-option-8 to toggle the function on, 
then command-option-equals and command-option-dash to increase and 
decrease the size.  You can reverse colors without turning off colors 
(something Apple keeps going back and forth on doing it the mousey 
way) using control-command-option-8.  Enlarging the Macintosh mouse 
cursor (which is not interpolated unfortunately) using the UA 
prefpane also enlarges the cursor under Parallels and VMWare Fusion, 
by the way.

I still find myself using the keyboard for most things.  I find that 
between VoiceOver, UA Magnifier, UA Cursor Zoom, and VMWare Fusion, a 
24" iMac is almost the ideal system for me.  Now if only Apple had 
seen fit to put eSATA connectors on it.  Ah well.

Joseph

On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 12:50:38AM -0800, Rob Lambert wrote:
>JAWS runs fine under VMWare. I just need to get those gaps in the command structure filled due to the shortcomings of the keyboard. I have yet to try Window Eyes. I will say this though: DO NOT attempt to run MAGic or Zoom Text or any magnifier other than the one in the Ease of Access Center that Microsoft provides. MAGic will NOT work because the graphics chip set in the MacBook is not powerful enough (it's an Intel GMA 3100 Integrated). ZoomText is interesting - one word: Blocks. Everything looks blocky or snake-like. In otherwords: If you are focused on the start button, and you move your cursor up, several start buttons will follow the cursor, creating a pile of them. As far as screen readers, though, JAWS is fine.